The Travellerspoint Blog

Margaret at Yosemite National Park

In this month's Talking Travel series, we chat to prominent and respected TP blogger and photographer Margaret Metcalfe aka margaretm. Margaret has travelled, lived in other countries and learned foreign languages for as long as she can remember. Her nomadic beginnings conditioned her for the rest of my life and since then, she's lived in eight countries and travelled extensively, working as an English teacher and translator, and doing voluntary work. Broadly speaking, she believes in making things happen and making dreams come true ("even if others think you are crazy"). Her experience is that travel is one of the best teachers you can have in life.

Her husband is Catalan, they have two teenagers and her home is a multilingual environment where they speak a mixture of Catalan, Spanish, English and Cataspanglish. They moved to Mexico City a couple of years ago where, among other things, she works with Casa Daya, a home for abused teenage girls with their children.

With some of the children at Casa Daya

You've been travelling since you were eight months old - is there anywhere you haven't been?

Although I’ve travelled widely, there’s still so much of this world I haven’t seen and would like to. For example, I haven’t stepped foot in South America or Australia yet and I would definitely love to see more of Africa. I actually like taking the road less-travelled so am happy to end up where there aren’t many tourists.

Some of my travels have been planned but others have just fallen in my lap unplanned, like our current situation, in Mexico or the time my parents unexpectedly went to work in the Seychelles for a year. I was able to spend a couple of months with them and get to know a country I otherwise would probably never have visited. That’s why my blog is titled: “Wherever life takes us”. I’m not sure where I’ll be going in the future but I’m open to new experiences.

You're a resident and travel helper of Mexico City – what are you favourite things to see and do there?

Mexico City, one of the world’s largest cities, is an extraordinary place packed with Aztec, Spanish colonial and Mexican culture. There are more than 152 museums in DF alone and I’ve probably only been to about 15 of them so far! Cycling is one of my favourite sports and about eight months ago, I bought a mountain bike so I now go cycling around the Historical Centre with its thousands of colonial buildings and its Mexican character. Another of my favourite places is Chapultepec Park, an enormous park with boating lakes, a huge well-kept zoo, America’s only real Castle and the Anthropological Museum where I often go to find out about Mexico’s past. I really like Coyoacán, home to Frida Kahlo’s museum, which still preserves its character as a small colonial town, especially eating delicious tostadas Mexican-style in the market there. The canals and colourful boats of Xochimilco and the Aztec Pyramids of Teotihuacan are also well worth visiting. I’ve written about some of these places and what life is like in Mexico City on my blog.

Cycling in Mexico City’s Zócalo

You have over 1000 photos on Travellerspoint, what do you love about travel photography?

Looking back, I remember from a very early age flicking through travel books and poring over the photos and maps and having a burning desire to go and experience these places for myself. My parents also took slides of our early years in Asia and on our boat journeys and as a family, we loved to have regular slideshows and re-live those experiences. A photo can convey so much and it’s been a natural step for me to record my own travels using photography. I’m a very visual person so now when I look back at photos I took months, years or even decades ago, I can re-live the whole situation... the sights, the smells, the sounds, the heat, the event as a whole. For me, it’s a bit like writing a visual diary of my experiences.

I particularly like to document a country or culture, not just take photos of the main sights. It’s often the small details which make up the uniqueness of a place and that’s what I try to capture in my photos and share with others. I also like my pictures to reveal the best of a place… if you look hard, you can always find beauty, sometimes in the most unexpected places. Someone once asked me if I thought I could make Bradford look great and I hope I could! Photography has made me much more observant and curious and through it, I have discovered a great deal more about the countries where I’ve lived or travelled.

Your blog 'Wherever Life Takes Us' is updated every couple of days – what tips do you have for other bloggers struggling with updating?

I’m a new blogger myself and am experimenting and learning as I go along. My advice would be to focus on one or two aspects in each post, and not to try to include everything. Select just a few interesting stories, anecdotes, or experiences. It’s probably better to write several shorter posts on specific topics, events or places than one very long one on everything you’ve done in the last two weeks. That can be very daunting. I often spend time thinking beforehand about what I want to include in my next few posts (while sitting in the traffic in Mexico City!!) and that makes it quicker when I actually have to sit down and write or decide which photos I want to upload.

You don’t even have to wait to go on major trips or travels to start blogging about your experiences. Sometimes writing about things which are ordinary or everyday for you can be interesting and even exotic for others. Also most people have digital cameras nowadays so include photos... let your pictures speak for you and avoid having to write long descriptions. On occasions, you may just want to upload a series of photos and put captions to them. That’s also a valid way to share your experiences with others.

What inspires you about travel?

I’ve always been fascinated by the incredible diversity of this world in all its forms, whether in the natural world or among different cultures. The more I travel, the more I’m amazed at the new things I discover and had no idea about. Over the years, I’ve also met people from different walks of life and learnt that it is often the poorest who are the most generous and hospitable. Seeing the deplorable conditions that some people live in also makes me very thankful for all the opportunities I’ve had and encourages me to do something positive to help others who aren’t as fortunate as I am. I’m constantly inspired by the exceptional people I’ve met who have dedicated their lives to making this world a better place.

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Check out these recent interviews in the Talking Travel series:

• Talking Travel with Tammi Jonas (tammois)
• Talking Travel with Bill Lehane
• Talking Travel with Inspiring Travellers (JohnAndrea)
• Talking Travel with Andre Frieden
• Talking Travel with Vagamos

Every two months, we hold a photo competition for our members. The community shortlists the top photos and votes for their favourites. The photos below are the best photos from the Doors and Windows Photo Competition.

1. Photo Competition Winner: Look up in Udaipurwati, India. Photo by krunal.

2. Runner-up: A view in Puno, Peru. Photo by kostlin.

3. Runner-up: Almerían layering in Almeria, Spain. Photo by amartxa.

4. Siem Reap, Cambodia. Photo by kostlin.

5. Overcome by sand in Eucla, Australia. Photo by a1132271.

6. Thessaloniki, Greece. Photo by bgh.

7. Fatima's Hand in Hombori, Mali. Photo by LuisDafos.

8. Window viewing in Cromwell, New Zealand. Photo by aimsuk.

9. A Blue View in Bergama, Turkey. Photo by kookie888.

Congratulations to krunal, who won the competition. They receive $100 worth of items of their choice from camera bag and case guru M-ROCK.

Runners-up kostlin and amartxa also receive an M-Rock voucher, this time for $30 each.

Thanks all for your entries and don't forget we have a fresh sunset and sunrise-themed competition kicking off next week!

Check out the results of past competitions:

• 10 Photos to Spark Your Sense of Adventure
• 15 Amazing Pink-Themed Photos
• Whimsical White: Photos from Around the Globe
• The Best Travel Photos of 2010
• Orange: 17 Brilliant Photos Featuring Orange

In this month's Industry Interview we chat to Stephanie Yoder, a freelance travel writer and founder of the popular travel blog Twenty-Something Travel. She is a non-9-to-5 enthusiast, a self-described "Girl who can't sit still" and on a mission to encourage others to launch their own international adventures. On a smaller note, I think she's got one of the best blog headers going!

Steph and a cute panda

What is Twenty-Something Travel?

There is this idea, particularly in the United States where I'm from, that you need to go to school, get a job, start a family, and then maybe when you are older you'll have time to travel. I think that's really a shame because in many ways your 20s are the ideal time to see the world: you have more energy, less responsibilities, and the lessons you learn while travelling can stick with you your entire life. I created my website with the goal of encouraging other young people to get out and see the world.

What inspires you to travel? What have been some of your most memorable experiences and destinations?

For me the most important part of travel is constantly learning and discovering new sights, foods and ideas. As a result, many of my favourite destinations were places that I knew very little about going in. Places like Iceland, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Cambodia.

Vietnam was one country where I felt like I was constantly encountering new things. The country is so big and crowded and frenetic; there were always people to meet, weird shops to discover and new amazingly delicious street foods to try. I spent five weeks there and I was exhausted often, but bored absolutely never.

A shot from Vietnam

According to your blog, London is your favourite city – what is it about it that you love?

I love to travel, but I also honestly believe that there is enough going on inside of London to keep me busy for my entire life. I lived in London for a while in my early 20s and just fell in love completely. It's a huge city with massive amounts of history and culture. I'm also a huge book nerd so I love it's many literary associations. There is always something going on, something to do, some new little corner to explore. In all my travels I've never found another city that gets my imagination and sense of romance racing the same way. I love it and I miss it everyday.

What words of encouragement would you give to people wanting to do a big trip but are a little hesitant?

The absolute hardest part of executing a big trip is actually making the decision to do it. It's such a big mental block and a lot of people struggle with the choice. Once you actually commit to making it happen, the rest falls into place fairly easily.

It can be really daunting to upend your life - but hey you've only got one chance to live.
I've never met anyone who has regretted taking time off to travel, but I've met plenty of people who wish they had.

I've never met anyone who has regretted taking time off to travel, but I've met plenty of people who wish they had.

You often journey solo: what advice do you have for young female travellers?

The idea of travelling alone is so much more scary than the reality. Even now before I set off somewhere on my own I get kind of nervous, but then once I push off I'm so glad I did. Travelling alone gives you so much freedom: you don't need to take anyone else's needs into account when deciding where to go, what to have for lunch, whether to nap all afternoon. It's very liberating and, as long as you possess basic common sense, much less dangerous than the media would have you think.

Travelling solo at the Forbidden City in Beijing

You've been referred to as an upcoming travel blogger to watch – what factors have contributed to your success and what's or more importantly where's next?
I just celebrated my two year blogaversary (yes, I made the term up), and nobody is more shocked than me at the amount of attention my blog as gotten. I am first and foremost a writer so I am really grateful that I can use my blog as a platform to share my thoughts. I write a lot about my personal experiences and emotions, but I try to connect them with the same universal travel truths that everyone experiences. I think as a result a lot of people feel like they can identify with what I have to say.

Right now there is so much going on! I'm home in the United States for the Summer working on some projects and writing. I've launched a second site called Everywhere Connection, with my boyfriend (who is also a travel blogger) and I'm working on some other still-to-be-announced projects. In the fall I will be headed to Central and South America for the first time - exciting!

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Check out our other posts in the Industry Interview series:

• Industry Interview with Igor Bratnikov from GreenXC
• Industry Interview with Gary Arndt of Everything Everywhere
• Industry Interview with Darren Cronian of Travel Rants
• Industry Interview with Sue Gough Henly

Tammi's Trip Map

In this month's Talking Travel series, we had the pleasure of chatting to Tammi Jonas aka tammois. Tammi is a travelling mother, a studious traveller and a well-travelled cultural theorist from Melbourne, Australia. As well as working on a PhD on the role of food in cosmopolitan, sustainable societies, she and her husband have just purchased a farm near Daylesford, Victoria, where they intend to farm free-range pigs and advocate for sustainable, ethical agriculture and a low-consumption lifestyle (which helps fund their incessant travels). To give you another insight into Tammi, her email signature reads: "I awake each morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savour the world. This makes it hard to plan my day." ~ E. B. White

Tammi and her partner Stuart at Canyonlands National Park in the US

You're a few months in to what's been dubbed 'RoadTripUSA', tell us more about this? Including info about the shipping container!

RoadTripUSA is one of those things I guess people now refer to as an item on a 'bucket list' – we've wanted to drive across the States (and Australia) with our brood for a while, and a mystical alignment of events led to our current adventure:

1) We were evicted from our rental in Melbourne so the landlord could renovate;
2) Stuart and I had solar and food and ag conferences to attend in the US in May and June;
3) We said, 'what the hell', booked flights, bought a 1977 GMC motorhome on Craigslist, and commenced planning for RoadTripUSA;
4) We bought a farm near Daylesford, Victoria a fortnight before we flew to San Francisco;
5) We bought a 40-foot shipping container, packed all our worldly belongings into it and dropped it off at the farm a few days before we flew.

The trip was all about spending a solid few months on our own as a family exploring and discovering America up close. We wanted history, culture and nature, and we wanted to learn how they vary from coast to coast. RoadTripUSA has hugely exceeded all our expectations for family fun, learning and adventure, as you can read on the Crikey Back in a Bit travel blog.

The shipping container we bought will be converted into our bedroom/study/bath to supplement the existing three small bedrooms in the farmhouse as soon as we move onto the farm. Stuart's just ordered windows from a supplier in China (good to have a man with a useful skillset - he is importing things directly from China at a quarter of the cost we'd pay in Oz, plus the ability to then build us a home!), and we hope to be in it within six weeks of moving onto the property.

The 'RockVan' courtesy of Craigslist

What do you hope to have learnt by the end of your trip?

One of the things I like to learn on every trip is just how little I know about the world. Even though I'm a west-coast American who migrated to Australia 20 years ago, I have loads to learn about this complicated, confounding and beautiful country full of people who floor me with their constant acts of personal generosity yet who are collectively individualist to the detriment of the greater good, in my humble opinion.

Travel helps me better understand my own contradictions as well as others, and so hopefully serve as a sort of cultural translator at times – a latter-day Atticus Finch who probably just irritates the crap out of everyone with my 'it's just their way, Scout' attitude about difference as I experience it.

This trip in particular though is intended to help my children understand the American side of their heritage better, and to give Stuart and I insight into the 'rebel farming' movement, including real knowledge about raising pasture pigs and running a small family farm.

You're travelling with your partner and three children, what advice do you have for families on the road?

We've travelled with our kids since they were bubs – I remember flying to Europe with all three of them when they were four, three and three months old. People said, 'how do you cope?' My response was always, 'I'd rather they have a tantrum somewhere new and interesting than at home in the lounge room.' We only had one 'international incident' on a flight from London to Paris that challenged that view.

I guess the most important things we've learned from travelling with little kids are to be flexible, manage our expectations, help them predict what will be happening in the days ahead, and when all else fails, say yes to pancakes. As for expectations – in Paris we had this silly idea that we'd revisit and recapture our youthful experience of falling in love in Paris – yeah, right, 'cos that was going to happen with three kids aged four and under! So instead of long days at galleries, we plan a couple hours, and instead of lots of cafes, we picnic in parks more. When they were very small (they're 11, 10 and seven now), I'd make pre-trip scrapbooks with them – we'd cut or print out photos from the internet of places we'd be going, people we'd be seeing, foods we'd be likely to eat, etc, and make up a timeline (even if rough) so they could see at each stage what to expect next. I knew it was working when we walked into our courtyard apartment in Paris for the first time and Oscar exclaimed, 'this is it!'.

The ages they're at now, I think the most important thing we have to remind ourselves is that they still need play time. If they don't get a couple hours of adult-intervention/direction-free time each day, they're more likely to resist our attempts to expose them to culture or go for long hikes. Their play time also gives us time on our own (sort of), which means that even after two months 24/7 together in the RockVan, we still love each others' company. ;-)

The non-troublesome trio

You're currently doing a PhD on the role of food in a cosmopolitan, sustainable society – what role does travel play in your research?

I've had the privilege to travel a fair bit for my research – to both Vietnam and Italy for fieldwork, and to India, Finland and the US as well as domestically in Australia to give conference papers. I've had to self-fund a lot of it as universities keep decreasing funding to research students (and even tenured academics, actually), but as I've always valued travel enormously I certainly haven't regretted the money spent.

Before I commenced this PhD Stuart and I had been keeping a 'food diary' when we travelled for a number of years – when I'm too busy to keep a 'proper' journal of my travels, I simply note down what I eat each day. It's an incredible mnemonic – I know exactly what I ate the day I met Stuart in London – mushies on toast.

So my research has simply honed a travel technique I'd been using for a long time – but it really has sharpened my insights into what I'm eating, why, and how it's affecting me and everyone I'm with. I love what my PhD has given me personally, especially when travelling!

It's hard to ignore the impact of food in your life, why are you so passionate about it?

Food is central to everything. One of my greatest pleasures is simply to cook and feed others. To do so, I am conscious of my connection to so many people, places, and animals – it helps ground me and understand my part in the world, as well as simply providing an intensely pleasurable creative outlet.

I figure if everyone was more knowledgable about and connected to food – where it's produced, by whom, and to what effect on the local environment and economy, as well as how it's prepared and consumed, again, by whom, under what conditions, to what cultural norms, with whom and why, everything would really be okay. Until everyone 'gets it', but especially those with the economic, political, social and cultural power to do something about it, we will still have obesity epidemics, hunger, and famine, often in the same country at one time. And we will watch our soils die before us as agricultural workers are poisoned and impoverished. And the wealthiest nations in the world such as America will continue to dive on 'happiness' ratings, at least partially because we've outsourced the things we need (to do) daily, such as cook, eat, and spend time with our families and friends.

Where's your favourite place in the world?

Wherever I am at the moment.

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Check out these recent interviews in the Talking Travel series:

• Talking Travel with Bill Lehane
• Talking Travel with Inspiring Travellers (JohnAndrea)
• Talking Travel with Andre Frieden
• Talking Travel with Vagamos
• Talking Travel with Tracey (TTG)

You might have seen us posting updates on Twitter or in our monthly newsletter about something called Travel Massive.

We wanted to shed a little more light about Travel Massive by posting more here. Travel Massive is a global initiative to connect people in the travel industry locally. It brings travel bloggers, brands, startups and socially engaged travellers together by way of a free monthly meetup in various cities.

It was started in Sydney in 2009 by Alicia Smith and Ian Cumming after they tweeted an open invite to meet other travel-focused people in the area. Over the summer, the monthly meetup grew rapidly with a steady stream of travel entrepreneurs, travel bloggers, travel photographers, brand managers, and passionate travellers all meeting for drinks and networking in Sydney's backpacker bars.

Today Travel Massive has spread to over 12 cities around the globe. A full list of locations is available here.

Melbourne Travel Massive Christmas meetup. Photo credit to Tom Howard.

Travel Massive also draws support from some large online travel companies, including World Nomads, Flight Centre, Intreprid Travel, as well as media partners Tnooz.com and Web In Travel.

An early Sydney Travel Massive meetup. Photo credit to Ian Cumming

• If you happen to be in Melbourne on 20 September, there's the opportunity to meet cofounder Peter. Event details here.

• We're also organising the first Berlin event along with Pocket Village on 15 September. More here.

So, if you're in interested in travel and the travel industry, try and get along to a #travelmassive!